Operating System

On matters regarding puter and related phones and tablets I admit to conservatism. I don't like change - if the 1s and 0s work I don't see the need to update. From experience early adoption means heartache and frustration.

I had been happy with the old operating system for both phone and computer. They were out of date but they were stable and I knew their idiosycrancies. I read in today's papers the sorry news that a security flaw meant I had no longer had a choice - I would have to update. I would be saying goodbye to a familiar electronic face.I had seen the face of the new operating system and found it garish - it's day glo icons reminded me of the children's TV programme the Tellytubbies. With regret I hit install and downloaded a new world. It didn't look brave.

The new operating system has some benefits but nothing remarkable. I am learning a few tricks.There is one constant however - I have no use in the old or new version for the dulcet tones of the voice recognition software. In a film called Her a man falls in love with a new operating system voiced by the siren song of Scarlett Johansson. It's a neat conceit but I can't help feeling its one only a man could dream off. I haven't seen the film so I cannot comment on how the ideas are explored. I can however imagine many women rolling their eyes as they are widowed by a tablet computer or smart(ish) phone.

 

 

Byzantium

We watched Neil Jordan's little seen vampire flick on DVD. It is the tale of a mother and daughter revanant and their attempts to survive a hostile modern world. The story is set in a dilapidated seaside town and was filmed in Hastings in East Sussex. I have visited the aforesaid and it is an atmospheric locale.

The vampire pony has been flogged to its knees by the Twilight saga and various post modern iterations. Bram Stoker's Dracula has been largely forgotten along with the primal fears triggered by the original tale. Byzantium itself is beautiful looking, well performed but ultimately hollow. The fault may not lie with the creators . Mr. Jordan is a talented filmmaker and writer with a sophisticated sensibility . He has made modern fairy tales like The Company of Wolves and Mona Lisa . The problem may lie with the audience and changing viewing habits. The practice of going to the cinema for adult entertainment may be in terminal decline. Home cinema and the Internet could leave the multiplex the provenance of the 3D spectacle or the teenager with various men in tights flicks.

In the past Hollywood did accommodate diverse sensibilities. The American Paul Schrader wrote or directed award winning films like Raging Bull . He was not drawn to cinema by nostalgia - his parents were religious and forbade his going to the movies. He saw his first movie at 18.His latest film The Canyons may be a portent for the future. He had to finance the film by crowd sourcing though the Kick Starter web site. He ended with a budget that was a small percentage of his studio features, a limited cinema release and viewed mostly over the Internet. I have not seen the movie so I cannot comment on its qualities. I have read about it and seen the trailer. It begins with a montage of abandoned film theatres and a lament for the demise of the seventh art form.

Mr. Jordan's film never explains why it is called Byzantium but I forgive the conceit. Byzantium is a beautiful word.

 

Stormy Weather

We lost a day to the storms in Southern England. We drove to Ashford to look in a shop and never reached our destination. Flood waters blocked the road between Canterbury and Ashford.The route back was then closed off to deal with twigs on the motorway. The detour through Sittingbourne shaved three hours from our existence.

The extremes in weather we have experienced do not seem that inclement to this Irishman. We regularly encounter high winds and rain in N Ireland. The province does not come to a standstill and we seem to manage without fuss.To hear the lowing cattle of the media community you would be under the misapprehension England had been devastated by a tsunami . To this observer it has not.

Ice and snow has been forecast . The preparedness for same will be the usual standard . I anticipate hours spent in stationary traffic.

 

Philadelphia Here I Come!

I am re-reading some of Brian Friel's plays . Mr. Friel lays claim to being Ireland's greatest living dramatist . Apropo nothing he also hails from my home town . The mise en scene and characters in his plays are very familiar.

In his play Translations he deals with a well worn theme - the death of the Irish language. Friel has described it as "a play about language and only about language" . It is set in the fictional town of Ballybeg in County Donegal in 1833. The plot is straightforward. A local man returns home after six years away in Dublin. With him are English cartographers working on the Ordinance survey map of Ireland . Both Irish and English characters speak their respective languages and they cannot understand each other. This failure has ruinous consequences. Drama is as much about what is not said as what is expressed and understood.

When I was at University I was asked to contribute to the Irish language society . Though I donated I flippantly said there was no point as it was on its uppers. Language is a reflection of politics and power . We are exhorted to learn Mandarin Chinese and Spanish as these are the languages of the new economies. It's unthinkable now but in a couple of centuries someone may be asking for donations to keep the English language alive.

 

Herne Bay

I spent yesterday morning as a flaneur in Herne Bay. Herne Bay is a seaside town 7 miles or so from Canterbury. It was popular as a holiday destination until the 1960s but cheap foreign travel has taken its toll and it has declined in the intervening years.

I am fond of Herne Bay and its forlorn amigo Margate. They have a dilapidated grandeur. If I was an investor I would speculate in the Bay. It's near neighbour Whitstable has become prohibitively expensive with DFLs ( an acronym for down from London) driving property prices skyward. I never take my own advice so braver and richer souls may benefit from a Herne Bay resurgence.

My reason for my trip was a gaping hole on the M2 on my wife's route to work. The lengthy detour left her exhausted so I offered to drive to and from Canterbury. It has taken two days to fix a few hours work with a JCB. A mountain and a molehill.

In the afternoon I arranged to meet a former work colleague for coffee. He is now a legal consultant for a property developer .We had a good time catching up in a blustery Canterbury . He is a practising Christian and still retains hope that I will make the leap to one flock or other. I assured him again I will remain steadfast in my convictions . God needs a loyal opposition.

 

Julio Cortazer

In a break from The Brothers Karamasov I read a book of Cortazer's short stories.

Julio Cortazer was an Argentinian writer who died in exile in Paris. He was a fabulist like his countryman Jorge Luis Borges but more humane.

In his collection All Fires the Fire there is a story called The Island at Noon. An air steward becomes obsessed with a Greek island he sees every day at noon on his scheduled flight from Italy to Beirut. His obsession affects his job - the passengers are left to their own devices as he stares rapt at the beautiful beaches of the island below.

He saves money and makes the journey to the island. He meets locals and swims on the cove he saw from above. He has found his paradise and resolves not to go back to his previous life.The next day at noon he hears the sound of his plane. He hesitates then looks up to see...

In the New York Times Book Review Cortazer is described as "the apostle of the lives we have chosen not to live".

 

Aide Memoire

I gave the hard drive a spring clean.

It was a tedious process involving sifting my photo files . My finger hovered over the mouse for a moment before committing approx 4500 photo files to the ether. I noted 26 gigabytes of information disappeared from the trash can on both hard drive and its doppelgänger the back up drive.The cull erased one in four photo files.

Most of the deletions were straightforward - duplicates of other files or duds. Bad composition, exposure errors or out of focus; they served no purpose. Others photos were ok but were not good enough to merit retention. These moments in time were cast into oblivion.

It's a forlorn procedure deleting representations of a moment . When younger there is the thrill of the purge and the tabula rasa. There is time to fill up the hard drive (real or metaphorical). As you get older it can be a melancholy experience .

When we lived in Twickenham we used to walk past a gallery called the Orleans. I went one day and saw an exhibition of photos from the 19th century explorer Sir Richard Burton. Burton is famous as an explorer of the Great Lakes of Africa and translating One Thousand and One Nights. Burton and his wife are buried in a remarkable tomb in the shape of a Bedouin tent in St Mary Magdalen's Church in Mortlake southwest London. If you get the opportunity I recommend a visit - it is a striking (and macabre) monument of empire.

One photo in the exhibition at the Orleans gallery stopped this viewer in his tracks. It was a momento mori of Burton on his deathbed. These post mortem photos were popular in the Victorian era. The dead would be posed in a photo for the benefit of the bereaved .Thankfully the practice largely ceased in the early 20th century. The modern sensibility can do without post mortem photos as aide memoire.